The hydrogen value chain
McPhy creates a new building block in the storage segment of the hydrogen value chain.
McPhy targets on-site stationary storage systems, initially for the merchant hydrogen market and on a longer term, for the growing renewable energy industry.
As shown above, industrial hydrogen production is mainly from the steam reforming of natural gas and less often from more energy-intensive hydrogen production methods like the electrolysis of water.
The merchant hydrogen market
McPhy targets the merchant hydrogen business, representing volumes of hydrogen that are sold by industrial gas companies. It includes liquid or gaseous hydrogen delivered by pipelines, in cylinders, tank trucks or railcars.
McPhy’s technology allows to replace this complex logistics scheme by on-site H2 production coupled with McPhy’s solid state H2 storage containers, allowing industrial hydrogen consumers to:
- reduce industrial risks with safer storage,
- reduce energy consumption, knowing that storing H2 traditionaly requires up to 33% of the energy contained in the gaz,
- reduce CO2 emissions and environmental footprint.
The fact that hydrogen is a critical resource for its industrial consumers combined with a comparatively small network of pipelines and the structural logistical flaws of pressurized or liquid transportation makes its storage, with its related set of technologies, of particular importance.
Hydrogen is stored in order to:
- secure production flow for consumers and to be less dependent from logistical problems (strikes, accidents...). 3 to 4 days of local storage is mandatory for most of the industries consuming hydrogen in their production process.
- buffer the consumption profile which is often highly variable at users’ sites and which can never be matched directly by the on-site production system.
The renewable energy market
For the last 30 years, even though renewable energy technologies have become mature thanks to the many experiments that have been carried out (especially in the solar and wind fields), their use as a mass source of energy has long been limited with only a few active power plants producing limited quantities of electricity. However, the deployment of these technologies is now following a new trend, with an impressive growth and a stronger share of electricity production. McPhy enables massive energy storage as hydrogen for this market, allowing to:
- reduce the unpredictability and the intermittent nature of the renewable energies production,
- solve the time discrepancy issue between the production (offer) and consumption (demand).
The plants can then either:
- convert the hydrogen back to electricity using a fuel cell,
- provide the merchant hydrogen market by using existing pipeline or transporting McPhy’s storage containers.